Russian President Vladimir Putin wrapped up a two-day summit here yesterday that was marked by much pomp but little substance, as both sides said commercial ties should be much greater.

Putin's visit, together with a raft of Russian ministers and businessmen, was meant to breathe new life into a Cold War-era friendship based on billions of dollars in arms deals.

But the traditional strong point of bilateral relations has shifted in recent years as India looks increasingly to the United States and other Western countries for its huge military needs.

Putin's trip, which culminated Friday in an elaborate Republic Day parade exhibiting India's largely Russian-made military might, brought a 250-million-dollar contract for joint production of jet

engines.

But other deals were few and far between.

On the key area of energy cooperation, India's state-run Oil and Natural Gas Corp (ONGC) and Russian state oil giant Rosneft agreed to jointly bid for exploration and refining projects in India, Russia and other countries.

ONGC and Rosneft said in a joint statement they would build on their existing partnership in Russia's vast Sakhalin-1 oil and gas field.

But ONGC had been hoping for a more substantial piece of Russia's energy pie, such as a 20 percent stake in the Sakhalin-3 field or a share in the vast Vankor field in eastern Siberia.

Currently, energy-starved India's only major stake in Russia's resource wealth is 20 percent of Sakhalin-1, which delivered its first shipments of oil to India in December.

In the much-touted field of nuclear cooperation, Russia promised to build four more nuclear reactors for a flagship nuclear plant it is building in Kudankulam in southern Tamil Nadu -- a state that already has two 1,000-megawatt Russian reactors.

Putin also pledged to co-operate in building atomic energy stations "at new locations in the Indian republic."

Russia is looking for a head start in the international race to supply the Indian nuclear energy market after the passage last year of a landmark US-Indian deal allowing New Delhi access to civilian nuclear technology after decades of isolation.

But no contracts with India can be signed before the Indo-US agreement is approved by the 45-nation Nuclear Suppliers Group, which regulates the global nuclear energy trade.

And beyond the militarized

spectacle of Friday's parade, both sides expressed disappointment that business between the two was lagging.

"Both of us agree that our economic relationship is far below what is consistent with the demands of our strong strategic partnership and the growth profiles", Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh said Thursday.

Meeting with Indian business leaders, Putin also said bilateral trade should be growing faster, setting a target of 30 percent growth per year and expressing his hope that turnover would triple to 10 billion dollars by 2010.

Putin said bilateral trade had jumped an estimated 20 percent to 3.8 billion dollars in 2006, though minutes later, Habil Khorakiwala, president of Indian business association FICCI, put the number at just 2.75 billion.

"Whether it's 10 percent or 20 percent or 30 percent doesn't matter. The main thing is that three billion dollars is still a tiny number for these two countries," an Indian official told AFP.

Khorakiwala posed a question that seemed to linger as the summit closed.

"We have to seek an answer to the question why, despite strong political ties between two time-tested friends, bilateral trade and business ties remain low," he said.